Micrometeors and the Paul trap

Autor: Ralph F. Wuerker
Rok vydání: 1999
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Mass Spectrometry. :1-7
ISSN: 1387-3806
DOI: 10.1016/s1387-3806(98)14288-4
Popis: In the late 1950’s, a Paul trap was investigated as a way to electrically charge micron size iron particles, for a laboratory micrometeor simulator. Particles could be charged but not high enough. The alternating quadrupole electric field was found to form stable arrays of charged particles, inside the trap, which could be resonantly excited. Positive and negative ions were also trapped and detected by their absorption of radio frequency power at their frequency of oscillation in the three dimensional effective potential well. These studies were done under a then active federally mandated aerospace independent research and development (IRD which, along with published papers, produced a (now public domain) patent which includes particle arrays, particle resonance schemes, particle damping, and particle expulsion.
Databáze: OpenAIRE